


i would shower you with roses if only they didn't make you need an epi-pen

by theappleppielifestyle



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: 'i don't need the hospital' he says as he goes into anaphylactic shock, 'no no i'm fine really' he insists as his throat closes up, Health Issues, M/M, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, how are you ALIVE steve gdi, steve is so damn stubborn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-09
Updated: 2014-08-09
Packaged: 2018-02-12 12:22:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2109753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theappleppielifestyle/pseuds/theappleppielifestyle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony has a plan to woo Steve, and is determined not to let Steve's health issues get in the way.</p><p>Which is hard, because giving him flowers make him have a sneezing fit, they have be careful about food because it seems like Steve is allergic to everything, and they end up spending most of their dates in the hospital after something goes wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i would shower you with roses if only they didn't make you need an epi-pen

**Author's Note:**

> So pretty much 2 thirds of this fic is [loving-that-officey-feel](http://loving-that-officey-feel.tumblr.com/)'s drabbles, and I thank them immensely for letting me use them in this fic.

It takes Tony two years of pining and staring mournfully out the window of his apartment to the window of Steve’s to finally work up the courage to try and woo him.

He tries not to get discouraged by how Pepper breaks down laughing when he tells her, because Pepper doesn’t understand his and Steve’s special bond. And Tony can _woo,_ okay, he can woo the crap out of people, so what if before this he’s only seduced people before? 

Because seducing and wooing turn out to be two very different things, as an exasperated and hung-over Rhodey explained to him once. What Tony has done countless times before is seduce people, which means he battered them around the head with charm and expensive gifts and flirtation until they fell into bed with him. At which point he then got out of bed after the resulting sex and then never spoke to them again.

That, Tony has done a lot. What he has never done is wooed someone, which is apparently a whole other string, a complicated one with _dates_ and _honesty_ and _feelings._

Tony doesn’t know how he’s going to go about this, he only has what he’s got from TV and his more stable friends, but he hopes he can pull it off without hugely offending Steve. 

And maybe, maybe there’s a slight hindrance in his plan that Pepper brings up when Tony exits the office with a bouquet of flowers that are possibly more expensive than everything in Pepper’s office put together:

“Doesn’t he have a list of health issues a mile long that he refuses to tell you about,” Pepper asks, eyeing the flowers dubiously. “Isn’t that going to be a problem?”

“It’s never been a problem before,” Tony says honestly. Sure, maybe they’ve had to cancel a few movie nights and lunch plans because Steve came down with something that made him literally unable to get out of bed. Sure, sometimes they’ve had to stop doing whatever they’re doing to haul Steve away from somewhere to get an epi-pen. Sure, a lot of their hangouts include Steve being in hospital while Tony cracks jokes at his bedside.

But Tony is determined not to let that stop him. Because he is going to woo the crap out of Steve.

 

 

“Oh,” Tony says, watching as Steve’s smile shudders and then stops as he starts having a sneezing fit.

Tony grabs the flowers out of Steve’s hands and looks around wildly. “Here,” he says, and shoves them into the hands of a passer-by who is frowning at Steve.

In between sneezes, Steve chokes, “Sorry, I bet they were really expensive-”

“Not really,” Tony lies, putting both his hands on Steve’s shoulders as he shakes with every sneeze. “Sorry for giving them to you, I should’ve known.”

He guides Steve away from the crowd and waits for him to ride it out. Then he hands Steve a bundle of tissues that he started carrying around about six months after he met Steve, purely for this purpose.

 

 

So his first plan went badly. Tony is by no means deterred.

He is also not deterred when Steve cancels on their dinner plans because he can hardly make it to the phone without passing out.

Nor is he deterred when Tony plans a trip out to see an art exhibition and Steve can’t go because he’s used up all his extra vacation and sick days for the year.

He admits he’s a little deterred, just a little, when they actually get to a nice restaurant and Steve starts going blue during their first course. At first, Tony is stupefied, because he had asked Steve to tell the waiter what he was allergic to and Steve had mumbled about 37 things and the waiter had stared at Steve like he was surprised he made it this far in life.

It turns out that although none of those items were in Steve’s food, the chef had cross-contaminated it their dishes with something Steve was deathly allergic to and Tony has to dive across the table and stab Steve with an epi-pen and they spend the rest of that night in a hospital.

Tony is, admittedly, a little bit more deterred when they go to a movie a week later, which would be fine except Steve didn’t mention he’s one of the people that can have an anaphylactic reaction to peanuts just by being in the same room as the smell of them, and Tony’ picked a late movie so it’d work around Steve’s schedule, so it’s late and the theatre is packed with lots of people who A) just got off work and B) are hungry so food is everywhere.

And there are two people next to a them eating peanut M&M’s and Steve doesn’t want to say anything, except his blood pressure is tanking, his throat is swelling up, he’s starting to get dizzy, and Tony finally notices when Steve starts passing out in the middle of the theatre. They sit in the car for the next twenty minutes as Steve argues faintly that he’s fine, really, he doesn’t need to go to the hospital, even though his lips are grey and he’s shaking even though he has both his and Tony’s coats on and the car’s heater is turned up to full blast.

In a weak attempt to continue with the Wooing Steve Plan, Tony rents a basketball court and they play for 15 minutes before Steve sprains his ankle and then they’re back at the hospital again.

At that point, Tony can admit he’s pretty fucking deterred.

 

 

The problem is, Steve is so damn _stubborn_ about it all. He refuses to give Tony his whole list of health problems, because he says people run screaming when they see how extensive it is.

“That doesn’t exactly set me at ease,” Tony says when Steve tells him this. “I’m going to think you’re allergic to everything, Steve, I’m going to end up wrapping you in bubble wrap and rolling you places-”

“You wouldn’t dare,” Steve says, all five feet of skinny pride that somehow works for him, and Tony sighs.

Tony starts keeping a list of what Steve has to avoid, starts carrying tissues and a small first aid kit, including an epi-pen, whenever he knows he’s going to be seeing Steve. It would be overbearing if they don’t have to use it 60% of the time.

The people at the hospital _know_ Tony now, know him as ‘Steve’s guy’ and ask him things about his life because Tony comes so often that the staff know things about him other than what’s on the news.

Tony doesn’t know how he feels about that.

 

 

Tony buys Steve some food on the way over to his apartment and then has to get it explained to him by Steve as he presses wads of tissues to his nose, that if the label says the thing ‘may have traces of nuts,’ that means Steve is guaranteed a nosebleed within ten minutes of eating it.

“It was a nice thought,” Steve says, voice muffled through the bloody tissues.

When Tony excuses himself to go to the bathroom, Tony brings out the Steve List and underlines ‘peanut allergy’ twice in bright red marker.

 

 

In his next attempt, Tony washes his hands of restaurants and their shitty cross-contamination that makes Steve explain, during the pauses between vomiting, that very little training is given to chefs/wait staff about allergies so the majority of people working in restraints don’t even know how allergies really work. And they assume that as long as they don’t put onions directly in your salad it’s fine, without thinking that the onion salt in the dressing might be a problem, or the onion used to make the broth for the soup, both of which can make Steve vomit until he’s dry heaving. 

Tony cooks, or at least attempts to- he’s full aware that he’s not very good at it, so he picks really simple food that even he can’t mess up, but with nice ingredients- wild rice and asparagus and grilled salmon.

Except when Steve comes over, he tells Tony awkwardly that asparagus is actually in the same food family as onions, so Steve can’t eat that, and Steve is also allergic to lemons.

Upon learning this, Tony takes their plates back to root through the left over fish bits and ends up just cooking some plain fish for Steve to go with his rice. 

Steve smiles and thanks Tony, but Tony can’t help the guilt that clenches at his stomach as he glances at Steve while he eats, since with all the rooting around and replacing Tony had to do, Steve hardly has any fish in his bowl at all. He pretty much has a plate of rice.

This experience gets written in capital letters on his Steve List as ‘check what foods are related to which family, and avoid entire families of bad foods, also, figure out what Steve is allergic to before trying again.’

 

In a last-ditch attempt, Tony takes Steve to a baseball game and puts them in a private box, and assumes that they’ll be safe.

Which is when a vendor comes in selling peanuts, and Steve tries to hide how he’s wheezing except Tony has trained himself to become alert at the smell of peanuts and looks towards Steve the second he catches the scent.

“I’m fine,” Steve says, voice thin and reedy as he tries to hide how he’s shuddering. “Really, we can keep watching the game-”

They end up spending the rest of the night in the hospital, and Tony takes his Steve List out of his pocket and writes ‘NO NUTS ANYWHERE EVER,’ in red marker and then outlines it with exclamation points.

 

They go to a special preview of a new art exhibit before it even opens, thanks to Tony pulling some strings and spending some money in the right places, he even gets the artist to  
be there.

Which is fantastic, it’s great and Steve loves it, except the show is all oil paintings and they’re so fresh they haven’t dried completely.

Which, again, would be fine, except Tony is unaware that a lot of oil painters, including the one that paints the painting they’re walking around looking at, thin their paint with nut oils.

Steve walks around the gallery excitedly for the first 15 minutes before he starts staring off into space, unable to concentrate and plodding along as exhaustion creeps up on him due to the overwhelming smell of nut. 

They have to leave when Steve starts sagging under Tony’s arm, and he falls asleep in Tony’s car despite the fact that its only 5PM.

Tony goes back to his Steve List and underlines ‘NO NUTS’ a few more times for emphasis, and then goes to Google how much everyday stuff has nut in it.

 

 

Tony, despite what people say about him, can admit when he needs to give up. He’s taken Steve on, what, close to a dozen dates, and they’ve all gone terribly. 

Also despite what people say about him, Tony can handle rejection. He can. Not that Steve has rejected him outright, but at this point he can assume that Steve is just humouring him and his awful dates and is far too polite to tell Tony to his face that he wants Tony to stop.

 _Message received,_ Tony thinks as he looks out his window to the window of Steve’s apartment.

 

 

When Tony doesn’t ask him out the following week, Steve doesn’t think much of it. Tony’s a busy guy, after all.

But when Tony doesn’t ask him out the week after that, and then starts avoiding Steve’s phone calls, Steve realizes something’s up. He texts Tony, asks if anything is wrong, and he gets ‘nope, everything’s good’ in reply.

Steve is inclined to believe it, but then thinks again when Tony doesn’t pick up when he calls him a minute after getting the text.

 _Oh,_ Steve thinks. _Okay._

He had been waiting for this to happen, honestly. It’s what happens with most people: Steve is used to people he likes either not being interested in him at all, or breaking it off the moment they figure out that they’d have to change how they lived their entire life just to not get him sick. In Tony’s case, he suspects it’s the latter.

Not that he blames Tony- he knows it’s a lot of effort even being friends with him, due to all his health problems. 

Steve snorts and goes to sit down on the couch, curling into his blanket and feeling like an idiot. Of course Tony wouldn’t be willing to give up that many things just for Steve, and Steve shouldn’t expect him to.

Except- except Tony tried, he really did, and Steve thought he was different. Tony never complained when Steve got sick and they spent most of their dates in the hospital, and never complained when Steve had to cancel on him, and once Steve told him something made him sick Tony never suggested to do something with that thing ever again.

Tony was completely weird in that he didn’t seem to care about Steve’s health problems other than if he was okay, or what to do to not make them act up. Instead of treating him like he’s made of glass, he invited him to play basketball. Instead of taking him to restaurants Tony found out his favourite brand of allergy-free chocolates and brought him a box of them instead. 

Tony’s funny and nice and caring and handsome, he’s sweet and thoughtful and incredibly smart. 

And, Steve figures, he’s reached the end of his tether. There’s only so many cancelled dates someone can take, Steve assumes, and thinks it’s about time Tony got tired of having to deal with Steve’s problems whenever they did anything.

Still, even though Steve understands, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt.

 

 

Two weeks pass, and they’ve texted a bit but Tony hasn’t asked Steve to go anywhere, and Steve has to resign himself to the fact that Tony doesn’t like him as much as Steve thought he did every time his phone lights up.

He’s fine, though. He skypes Bucky and skirts around the question when Bucky asks why he hasn’t mentioned Tony much, no, really, usually you can’t shut up about the guy, Steve, what’s with you today, no, wait, come on, I was just joking, we can talk about something else, how’s work?

Steve watches Brooklyn Nine Nine, and then gets sick and spends the next two days in bed watching the whole season again.

As he’s watching the season finale, in the middle of an emotional crisis as Jake tells Amy he wants things to happen between them, ‘romantic stylez,’ there’s a knock on the door.

Steve is at the point of his cold when he can actually walk to the door from his bed, so he does that and opens the door and finds a man glaring at him hard enough that Steve starts going back through who he pissed off recently.

“Hi,” the man says, folding his arms over his chest and flexing them. “You’re Steve Rogers?”

“I am,” Steve says, holding his chin high. If he’s going to get the shit kicked out of him while having a blanket wrapped around him like a cape, he’s going to do it with pride.

The man snorts. “I’m Rhodey. We have a mutual friend.”

“Oh,” Steve says, making the connection. “Tony talks about you all the time-”

“Yeah, you too,” Rhodey cuts him off. “Look, man- I’m sure you’re a nice guy and all, Tony certainly seems to think so. But if you’re so nice, why haven’t you gone and dumped Tony to his face like any decent person would do?”

Steve stares. “Um.”

“He at least deserves that,” Rhodey continues. “From what I’ve heard, he’s pretty attached to you. Would be nice if you went and let him down easy.”

“Um,” Steve says again, brain stuck on a loop. “I’m, I’m not- we aren’t- I thought Tony didn’t want anything to do with me.”

Rhodey narrows his eyes at him. “What the hell would make you think that?”

“He kind of stopped talking to me,” Steve says. “Or, he stopped- we just text now, and sometimes he doesn’t even respond. I assumed-”

He stops when Rhodey lets out a groan that drowns him out. 

Rhodey digs the palms of his hands into his eyes, grumbling under his breath. “Okay. Jesus Christ.”

“Would you like to come in,” Steve says, at a loss of what the hell else he can say. 

Rhodey gives him a dry look. “No. Actually, you’re coming with me across the street to Tony’s place, and while we’re walking I’m going to explain to you why you’re both gigantic idiots.”

“Hey,” Steve says, affronted.

“Put some shoes on,” Rhodey says, and Steve frowns but does.

 

 

Tony wakes up to Rhodey banging on the door and yelling, “Tones, this is your weekly reminder that you’re the dumbest genius I’ve ever met.”

“Gnnnnhh,” Tony says, because he’s never very coherent in the mornings. He gets out of bed, drags his blanket with him and shuffles to the door. “Why are you here, you said you’d get here next-”

The words die in his throat as he opens the door to see Rhodey smiling smugly, an arm slung over Steve’s shoulders.

“Talk,” Rhodey says, and pushes Steve lightly into the apartment. “See you tomorrow, Tones.”

“Wait,” Tony yells, but Rhodey is already halfway down the hall.

“Hi,” Steve says, and Tony wishes he had put on some clothes before coming out here, instead of rolling out with just his boxers and a blanket.

Tony tugs the blanket closer around him, closing the door. “What were you doing with Rhodey? I mean, hi. But really, what were you doing with Rhodey?”

“Talking,” Steve says, turning to face him after glancing around his apartment. “He said some pretty interesting things.”

“Gnnnhh,” Tony says. “What things.”

“That we’re both idiots,” Steve says, and okay, he’s stepping closer, what is the deal with that.  
“How so?”

“I thought you stopped asking me out because you couldn’t be bothered having to deal with all my health issues.”

“WHAT,” Tony yelps, and then coughs, lowers his voice. “That’s- that’s not why, I would never do that.”

“Mm,” Steve says. “Rhodey said you did it because you thought I was going out with you out of pity. Which is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard, come on, you think I would go out with you if I didn’t want to?”

“…Maybe?”

“Well, I want to,” Steve says. “Go out, I mean. If you still want to.”

“I,” Tony says, and tries to fight his smile before realizing Steve is smiling just as big and he probably doesn’t need to. “Yeah, that’s be- I’d like that.”

“Good,” Steve says softly. Then he shivers, a full-body one that he tries to clamp down on, and Tony frowns as he notices he isn’t wearing a jacket.

“Hey, no, what was Rhodey thinking, what were _you_ thinking, it’s fucking freezing,” Tony says, moving on autopilot to take his blanket off and wrap it around Steve. 

“He didn’t give me a lot of time to get ready,” Steve says. “These are my pyjama pants.”

“They’re cute.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“No, really,” Tony says, grinning. “They’re adorable.”

Steve snorts, and then pauses. “Hey, are you cold?”

“Nah,” Tony says, and then realizes what’s happening and backtracks. “I mean, yes, so cold, brrr, there’s frost on the windows and everything, I’m freezing, Steve, help me.”

Steve rolls his eyes as he opens his blanket and Tony steps into it. Steve closes his arms around Tony so the blanket is around both of them, and then, tragically, leans back when  
Tony tries to kiss him.

“I’ve got a cold.”

“I’ll invent a cure,” Tony says, and tilts his head down hopefully. 

Steve sighs, but he’s smiling as he kisses him.

 

 

When Tony gets over the cold Steve passed onto him, he tries to come up with a date idea that doesn’t involve food, or people around them that will have food, and comes up with rollerskating.

He rents out a rink, gets a professional clean crew to scrub it down ahead of time so no food residue anywhere, sets up a playlist and invites Steve onto the rink.

Due to the strobe lights and throbbing music, combined with the wheels messing up Steve’s sense of balance and giving him vertigo, Steve lasts ten minutes on the rink before fainting and narrowly missing hitting his head on the wooden floor.

“Shit,” Tony says, wheeling over as fast as his wheels will take him. He pries them off his feet before getting Steve to the side of the rink, yells for the lights and music to be turned off and goes to get a cup of water for Steve to drink when he wakes up.

“Sorry,” Steve says in between sips.

“It’s seriously not a problem,” Tony replies. “Although you know what would really, really help? You giving me your complete list of health issues.”

Steve gives him the stink-eye. “When we get back,” he says finally, and Tony kisses his forehead.

**Author's Note:**

> here's my [tumblr](http://theappleppielifestyle.tumblr.com/).


End file.
